AA at bottom of list

[jimntx]

I came over to AA as a customer after accruing about 1.2 million miles on USAirways. They have always taken a lot of criticism but I rarely had problems using miles and getting upgrades with miles.

I'm now sitting on 465,000 miles and find it virtually impossible to ever use the miles for upgrades. There is really no incentive (especially with the new changes to the program) to be committed to AA or any airline for that matter.

As I understand the AAdvantage program (I'm a flight attendant. I'm paid to be cute, not smart.), unless at least 100,000 of those miles are recent (i.e. you are currently Executive Platinum), you probably will never be able to use those miles for upgrades. Reason being that there are not upgrade seats available. Executive Platinum (100,000 or more miles flown in last 12 months) passengers are automatically upgraded to F/C on a space available basis with no charge to their mileage accounts. A lot of EPs now book upgrade-able coach tickets when they know the particular flight almost always has F/C seats available, because they know they have a very good chance of being upgraded. I worked a flight recently where 12 of the 16 F/C passengers were upgrades. 11 of the 12 were EP.

 

[jack f]

As I understand the AAdvantage program (I'm a flight attendant. I'm paid to be cute, not smart.), unless at least 100,000 of those miles are recent (i.e. you are currently Executive Platinum), you probably will never be able to use those miles for upgrades. Reason being that there are not upgrade seats available. Executive Platinum (100,000 or more miles flown in last 12 months) passengers are automatically upgraded to F/C on a space available basis with no charge to their mileage accounts. A lot of EPs now book upgrade-able coach tickets when they know the particular flight almost always has F/C seats available, because they know they have a very good chance of being upgraded. I worked a flight recently where 12 of the 16 F/C passengers were upgrades. 11 of the 12 were EP.

If you are correct the airline must be holding those seats for the anticipated upgrades. I often make my reservations 3 -4 weeks head of time and there are usually 8 seats available on an A321 but you still can't get one with an upgrade.

 

[jimntx]

If you are correct the airline must be holding those seats for the anticipated upgrades. I often make my reservations 3 -4 weeks head of time and there are usually 8 seats available on an A321 but you still can't get one with an upgrade.

That I can't answer, but there always seems to be at least one or two upgrades in F/C that are EPs booked in coach, and I've experienced several more than 1 or 2 on some flights.